Rating: "A-". A stirring saga of science, Mars, and life, marred
by a weak ending, but well-worth your attention.

Paul McAuley's usual topics and tropisms are well-employed in this
new biotech SF-thriller. In 2026 a Martian microbe, secretly brought
back to Earth by a Chinese expedition, is accidentally released into
the Pacific during an attempt to steal a sample by Cytex, a powerful
but unscrupulous American biotech firm. The Mars-bug thrives, and grows
into strange floating islands, which shed 'slicks' that kill terrestrial
marine life. The descriptions of this strange alien invader are reminiscent
of Ian McDonald's wonderful Chaga, with a nod to HG Wells'
War of the Worlds. I'm not fully-qualified to judge McCauley's
biologic premise (and MacGuffin), which it wouldn't be fair to reveal,
but he's done his homework -- I'm weaselling here because of a research
lapse I'll mention a bit later, but rest assured his premise is just
fine for fiction. Is there a biologist in the house?

The Americans send an expedition of their own to Mars, hoping to duplicate
the Chinese discovery. The expedition scientists include Mariella Anders,
our protagonist and a biological genius on the level of a Feynman or
an Einstein. Like most geniuses (genii?), she is unconventional: Mariella's
foibles include body-piercing, soft drugs, and rough sex. This last
is used for blackmail by Penn Brown, an odious Cytex scientist also
on the Mars expedition.

Mariella is a high point of the book, and McCauley's best character
yet, I think. The descriptions of her scientific education and career
are full of neat observations and insights -- McAuley is himself a former
research scientist -- and her portrayal as a Feynman-level genius is
wonderful. A gen-Z greenpunk biogenius -- all right!

The Martian scenes -- about half of the book -- are very fine, strongly
reminescent of Kim Stanley Robinson's RGB Mars trilogy: impeccable (I
hope) research and extrapolation, poetic descriptions of alien landscapes,
palpable excitement in exploring a new world -- and a sadly-realistic
portrait of the techno-squalor around the Martian settlements, comparable
to Swanwick's gritty (and great) Griffin's Egg.

When Mariella returns to Earth, on the run with stolen samples of the
'Chi', the Martian superbug, the story becomes a more conventional --
and less interesting -- pursuit-thriller. I lost track of the cardboard
villains and bit-players (I fell asleep), and I'm not interested enough
to go back and sort them out. The dramatic 'climax' is just silly --
Mariella the greenpunk genius as a charismatic crowd-pleaser at a big
bioscience conference -- well, my dears, you've been warned, it ain't
the high point of the book.

McAuley makes a few other stumbles, notably in his
Southern Arizona scenes, where he misplaces a mountain range by a hundred
miles [note
1]. And the authorities seem curiously unconcerned about the rapidly-multiplying
Martian 'slicks', even as they're ruining fisheries and alarming voters.

The bottom line: The Secret of Life tackles big, meaty issues,
it's well-written, and it's fun to read. Even though it's not completely
successful, I'd say it's pretty much a must-read for hard-SF and McCauley
fans.

Notes

Note 1)
...illustrating the danger of using a setting the author doesn't know
well, when he encounters a reader/reviewer who lives in that setting.
This lapse will pass unnoticed by most readers, but makes me uncomfortable
about the quality of his research in areas I don't know as well. Not
that I read SF to learn science (or geography), but McAuley has a reputation
for playing the hard-SF game with the net up.... And I do hope the many
mangled place-names are corrected in the US edition. [...back
to main text]